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Thursday, August 4, 2011

HOW TO: get your own Google+ short/Vanity URL

...sharing my profile pages with my friends on social networks sites like twitter, facebook becomes so easy when using my short-name "stannesi" most times I just say "hey buddy, follow me on twitter" without even telling them my @handle, they figure it out since I'm the only @stannesi they know that ever existed on earth....lol anyways my point exactly is unlike facebook and twitter, Google+ Profile doesn't have short URLs for their users profile, making it more difficult to share your Google+ profile with other people, maybe probably they expect you to google search your friend. Google+ uses a (21) digit long ID to identify users (e.g.103467992719504744575 ) or you can use your google account profile it auto-redirects you to your Google+ Profile page here's mine http://profiles.google.com/stannesi.

Google+ doesn't use short URLs probably because most Google+ Accounts are linked to Gmail accounts, giving spammers a means to figuring out the e-mail addresses of millions of Google+ users, and you know this leads to some trust issues. Just a thought, anyways i trust Google, they always figure it out.

I hope i didn't bore you with all that, so the reason why we're here is you don't want to be telling people use your 21 digits long ID or http://profiles.google.com/stannesi to circle you on Google+. That's where Gplus.to and several others makes an entrance. gplus.to its a simple tiny web-app that lets you create a custom short URL for your Google+ Profile page, making it easy to share your profile with friend. It took me less than a min to create mine Gplus.to/stannesi, which is easier to remember than a 21 digit long ID or http://profiles.google.com/stannesi.

Gplus is not Google way of offering short URLs service. Google+ doesn't offer short URL for now, maybe they will in the future, but before then you should give it a try.